Boston Marathon bombing victim sues Glenn Beck

A Saudi Arabian man injured by one of the two bombs that detonated at last year’s Boston Marathon is suing conservative commentator Glenn Beck in federal court for defamation.

Abdulrahman Alharbi, then 20, was among the hundreds hurt during
last April’s footrace in the metropolitan Massachusetts city
after a pair of homemade pressure cooker bombs exploded near the
finish line, killing three. Now nearly a year later, attorneys
for the man have filed suit against Beck in response to erroneous
on-air remarks he made repeatedly about their client in the
aftermath.

Federal authorities eventually narrowed in on brothers Dzhokhar
and Tamerlan Tsarnaev as their main suspects in the days that
followed the bombing, but Beck — a radio and television
personality who previously spent years hosting a program on Fox
News — broadcasted his own bombastic theories for weeks,
including allegations that tied Alharbi to the terror attack.

Indeed, Alharbi was questioned by authorities shortly after the
incident — as were many others, the lawsuit filed on Friday
reads. But while officials ultimately cleared the student of any
involvement in the plot, Beck insisted to his audience that there
was more to the story.

According to the lawsuit, for weeks Beck continued to try and
link Alharbi to the terrorist attack, and repeatedly referred to
him as “the money man” who helped to fund the event.

“While the media continues to look at what the causes were of
these two guys, there are, at this hour,three people
involved,” Beck said during an April 22 episode of his radio program.

”We know who this Saudi national is. … We know who this man
is and, listen to me carefully, we know he is a very bad, bad,
bad man,” he said in another cited by the Washington Post.

Attorneys for Alharbi are now suing Beck, as well as his website
The Blaze and the radio entities that carried the pundit’s
program, for defamation and defamation with malice.

“On and after April 15, Beck broadcast repeated statements
distributed and published to others…identifying Alharbi as an
active participant in the crimes that were committed in
Boston,” Alharbi’s lawyer, Peter Haley, wrote in a six-page
suit filed last week.

“Beck . . . repeatedly questioned the motives of federal
officials in failing to pursue or detain Alharbi an repeatedly
and falsely accused Mr. Alharbi of being a criminal who had
funded the attacks that took place at the Boston marathon,”
the filing continues. “Those statements were made widely and
publicly. The statements were false and caused grave injury to
the plaintiff.”

According to Alharbi’s attorneys, their client was condemned as a
terrorist by complete strangers due to Beck’s allegations,
despite having been long-cleared by federal authorities involved
in the investigating the bombing.

“Alharbi has received numerous messages, internet postings
and other communications based on Beck’s false statements
accusing him of being a murderer, child killer and
terrorist,” the suit reads.

"It's not easy to forget," Alharbitold Islamic Monthly
in an interview published since the April 15 bombings.
"Because you just going to write my name and search about
[me], you are going to think I am from Al-Qaeda and, like
terrible things."

Similarly, two men accused of participating in the attack by the
New York Post — and displayed prominently on the front page of
the cover after last year’s attack — have sued that publication
for defamation in Massachusetts court. That case is still
pending.

Attorneys for Alharbi are asking the court to determine the
amount of damages they think the alleged defamation brought on by
Beck caused, and are hoping to have legal costs incurred by the
defense as well.

As of Tuesday morning, Beck had yet to respond publically to the
lawsuit.